SLow Offhand - How bad is it?!

Evening,

I play my Rogue very casually, I am wondering if I could get away with Slow/Slow as subtelty in battlegrounds without it being massively worse. I only play unrated battelgrounds and am not interested in duels, arenas, rated BGs. What I want to know if can i use 2x slow purely for cosmetic reasons without making my rogue compeltely unplayable?

You should be using daggers for sub. If you don't care about being bad then you might as well play naked.

"don't care about being bad" doesn't exactly equate to the statements in

Originally Posted by Slipper

I play my Rogue very casually, I am wondering if I could get away with Slow/Slow as subtelty in battlegrounds without it being massively worse. I only play unrated battelgrounds and am not interested in duels, arenas, rated BGs. What I want to know if can i use 2x slow purely for cosmetic reasons without making my rogue compeltely unplayable?

Will there be a really noticeable difference?

and the tone it implies both shows the duality between being the best you can and the statement "why try", as well as coming across as somewhat caustic.

Let's keep to the topic at hand.

OT: You'll lose a lot more from a slow MH than slow OH (inability to backstab being #1); the OH loss should* be limited to a lack of poison damage, as DP can't proc if the weapon doesn't swing. azzalle's also correct, if you choose to try or enjoy combat - double slow weapons are perfect.

"don't care about being bad" doesn't exactly equate to the statements in

and the tone it implies both shows the duality between being the best you can and the statement "why try", as well as coming across as somewhat caustic.

Let's keep to the topic at hand.

OT: You'll lose a lot more from a slow MH than slow OH (inability to backstab being #1); the OH loss should* be limited to a lack of poison damage, as DP can't proc if the weapon doesn't swing. azzalle's also correct, if you choose to try or enjoy combat - double slow weapons are perfect.

Thanks for the reply even though i didn't understand most of your reply to the other guy

I have swapped to Combat as suggested as ideally id like Slow offhand & to be super-awesome....

Loving it! Although im curious on one thing - What is the reforge priority for combat rogues? Only thing I could find online was the Noxxic site and was told to stear clear of that...

Noxxic is actually very helpful, compared to the other sites. For Rogues, you can use shadowcraft.com/mumble. For Combat you want 7.5hit>7.5exp>haste>mastery>crit, and you want to gem/enchant haste>agility. Lightning for green, Quick for yellow, and Deft for orange slots.

Noxxic is actually very helpful, compared to the other sites. For Rogues, you can use shadowcraft.com/mumble. For Combat you want 7.5hit>7.5exp>haste>mastery>crit, and you want to gem/enchant haste>agility. Lightning for green, Quick for yellow, and Deft for orange slots.

Noxxic is actually very helpful, compared to the other sites. For Rogues, you can use shadowcraft.com/mumble. For Combat you want 7.5hit>7.5exp>haste>mastery>crit, and you want to gem/enchant haste>agility. Lightning for green, Quick for yellow, and Deft for orange slots.

No. Only once you reach a certain gear threshold (~15k agility) will you switch to lightning/quick/deft. Until that point it's delicate/deft/glinting.

No. Only once you reach a certain gear threshold (~15k agility) will you switch to lightning/quick/deft. Until that point it's delicate/deft/glinting.

Actually it's the opposite way around. Guides say that you want to get as much haste as possible at early levels and eventually switch to agility. Myself along with pleanty of other type Rogues have been gemming haste since release and we're still using it in BiS gear. We'll probably start gemming agility once the gear starts getting to give us enough haste to use without gemming for it, in future tiers. Have some facts to back up your argument at least.

I'd like to clarify that, in spite of hyperbole and sarcasm, Sessh is pointing out that all math I've seen supports agi > haste until mid-T14N, and haste > agi after that, through the end of the tier, with haste's lead on agility becoming GREATER, not smaller (last part based on personal recollection, but I'll double check that).

Err no that wasn't sarcasm. The OP only talked about pvping in normal battle grounds and what he should do there. A spreadsheet is going to (ideally) optimize you for doing the most sustained dps over a certain amount of time. PvP is not won just because you maintain a reasonable amount of dps. If the healer is doing their job and cd's are used properly, sustained dps isn't going to get you far. What you want is to have a chance at bursting down some one in whatever window you can get/make. If he wants to go combat so he can effectively use double slow weapons, I seriously think crit is probably best. Now maybe some serious pvpers have strong arguments why I am wrong, but that was seriously my opinion.

I also didn't see anything from the OP indicating a shift in his focus to PvE'ing, so my take was he was still asking for reforges for the unrated battle grounds which was the (only) thing he indicated being interested in on his OP.

Err no that wasn't sarcasm. The OP only talked about pvping in normal battle grounds and what he should do there. A spreadsheet is going to (ideally) optimize you for doing the most sustained dps over a certain amount of time. PvP is not won just because you maintain a reasonable amount of dps. If the healer is doing their job and cd's are used properly, sustained dps isn't going to get you far. What you want is to have a chance at bursting down some one in whatever window you can get/make. If he wants to go combat so he can effectively use double slow weapons, I seriously think crit is probably best. Now maybe some serious pvpers have strong arguments why I am wrong, but that was seriously my opinion.

I also didn't see anything from the OP indicating a shift in his focus to PvE'ing, so my take was he was still asking for reforges for the unrated battle grounds which was the (only) thing he indicated being interested in on his OP.

Complete failure on my part from "going to first unread post", sorry... was reading "haste" vs. "agility" and "tier". Took out my comment.

Shadowboy below has the same information regarding PvE I was double-checking.

Actually it's the opposite way around. Guides say that you want to get as much haste as possible at early levels and eventually switch to agility. Myself along with pleanty of other type Rogues have been gemming haste since release and we're still using it in BiS gear. We'll probably start gemming agility once the gear starts getting to give us enough haste to use without gemming for it, in future tiers. Have some facts to back up your argument at least.

You're reading the wrong guides then. Secondary stats increase in scale as you gear up, primary stats (agility) stay pretty flat throughout an expansion. At expansion start agility is always your best stat, as you reach the end of an expansion, the secondary stats approach it (and in the case of haste/armor pen in wrath, they actually exceeded the scaling of agility by late ICC). In mists, haste doesn't become more than half agility until ~485-490 item level (the threshold is lower if you use a sha touched weapon due to the extra agility from the legendary gem).

Actually it's the opposite way around. Guides say that you want to get as much haste as possible at early levels and eventually switch to agility. Myself along with pleanty of other type Rogues have been gemming haste since release and we're still using it in BiS gear. We'll probably start gemming agility once the gear starts getting to give us enough haste to use without gemming for it, in future tiers. Have some facts to back up your argument at least.

I'm afraid you're wrong, as for sources, you can check just about every single theorycrafting tool for rogues that works. Agility is about 2.1-2.3 times better than haste when you're in pre raid gear, this drops to around 1.8-2.0 in normal gear and then 1.6-1.8 in BiS gear. Haste's value relative to agility gets better with gear, not worse.

Err no that wasn't sarcasm. The OP only talked about pvping in normal battle grounds and what he should do there. A spreadsheet is going to (ideally) optimize you for doing the most sustained dps over a certain amount of time. PvP is not won just because you maintain a reasonable amount of dps. If the healer is doing their job and cd's are used properly, sustained dps isn't going to get you far. What you want is to have a chance at bursting down some one in whatever window you can get/make. If he wants to go combat so he can effectively use double slow weapons, I seriously think crit is probably best. Now maybe some serious pvpers have strong arguments why I am wrong, but that was seriously my opinion.

I also didn't see anything from the OP indicating a shift in his focus to PvE'ing, so my take was he was still asking for reforges for the unrated battle grounds which was the (only) thing he indicated being interested in on his OP.

I generally agree with you about crit being needed for burst, but due to combat's mechanics, haste also contributes to burst (20% attack speed from AR--especially when coupled with shadow blades, plus more haste = more autoattack swings at +50% damage during killing spree).

What it comes down to is this: it takes 600 crit to gain 1% more damage via crit. It takes only 425 haste to gain 1% damage via haste. Haste benefits nearly all of combat's mechanics so much more than crit that it becomes far more itemization efficient to use haste.

I will, however, agree that the gap between the value of haste and crit is much smaller in pvp than in pve. PvP gear in general has much more crit in it than pve gear so you're going to have extra crit by virtue of using pvp gear, so haste will be much lower than in pve gear. Reforging/gemming haste offsets this.

On topic: while a slow off hand is *slightly* better in pve when used optimally, it is substantially better in pvp and you certainly want to use double slow as combat in pvp. As sub, you want double daggers.

Actually it's the opposite way around. Guides say that you want to get as much haste as possible at early levels and eventually switch to agility. Myself along with pleanty of other type Rogues have been gemming haste since release and we're still using it in BiS gear. We'll probably start gemming agility once the gear starts getting to give us enough haste to use without gemming for it, in future tiers. Have some facts to back up your argument at least.

Actually, you are wrong and you can check any reputable theory crafting site (most notably Elitist Jerks). Looks like you are the one lacking facts to back up your argument.

If you're going to 3.5% hit in pvp, you're wasting itemization. At-level hit cap is 3%. Expertise is more of a gray area. 3% expertise will remove dodge from the table for all non-agility specs, but against any melee it won't be enough to stop dodges/parries, so the value drops past 3% (since beyond that point it does nothing vs casters), but still useful vs agi/str specs until probably ~15%.

5-point RvS kidney is 8.1 sec against npcs, 8.0sec against players. The only time it was ever 8.7 sec was when RvS was glyphed in cata, and only against non-players.